Rack Focus

"Pisceans are Icarian," Mallory announces, comparing the young Coop in his bomber jacket with my studded one. Her gaze pans to the wide leather rocker dad pulled by the fireplace as he gnaws the sub sandwich we brought.

"The names should have been inverted," he commands gruffly. "Daedalus for the one who crashed, Icarus for the survivor."

To avert his glare, we study framed documents: a flattering pose of the young Roosevelt, the Cooper siblings crammed into a Bodega Bay motor boat, dad’s official discharge and certificate of missions flown. Apparently they kept raising the ante on the amount needed for retirement. Coop swore he survived only because he hadn’t shipped out to North Africa or Normandy. Still he came home with unsteady hands, "the pinebox jerks."

Music helped him regroup. Mallory indicates a news clipping on the Bodega Blues Band. Rumors about dad’s trumpet days included jail visits for reefer or barroom brawls (mom said real fights last much longer than movie orchestrations and she enlisted in the pathetic wives club); one legend alluded to a homosexual misdemeanor of the consenting-adult variety.

I swipe paper napkins at the barometer dust. Never too absorbed in the antics of this self-serving miser (I worked through school while friends coasted), I let my sister pore historian as his mudcaked heels marked floorboards and a craggy voice told how low test runs sent field worker dresses flaring. Sis taped enough stories to counterweigh Steinbeck.

Mallory sits on the hearth, the fire painting deeper hollows across her bones. We feed in logs as the old man tips back another brew. At the third bottle, he halts the rocker. "You look like her." We presume he means I suddenly resemble my mother, further evidence of limited lucidity. Mal and I, huddled at the hearth, grow more uneasy.

He tilts back, then the battered wood arcs forward pressing grooves in the braided rug. "You don’t understand how we loved that man," he says. He could never acknowledge FDR’s shortcomings (let alone personal morality)–the insistence on isolation, ships of Jews returned to face certain death. The FDR funeral centered his memoirs: more than a brief respite from war orders, that week of grief had been the freest time he’d ever known. When the war ended, he came right home to marriage and a succession of screaming, creaming babies of whom I ranked youngest and most cranky.

On-going disappointments, still nursed, led to domino career failures. His current wealth (pillars of collectibles lean against varnished panels) derives from a near-constant hustling of used goods, the local pioneer of recycling. With hip out of whack, he plays telephone more than a top agent while remixing his own legend, thus Mallory can attest to the heroic ace instead of the marginal criminal, can hear firsthand the glorification of a nation forlorn.

I pyramid rounded logs until his current rendition drifts past strangers dancing, sobbing and singing, uniting joined misery like a death pantomime of New Year’s Eve. He still smells the sawdust. Despite feigned disinterest, my head swivels as he renders this version. "All my real pals were dead," he sighs, uncapping bottle four. "The bar was so packed that, after dancing, three of us wedged one barstool." Unlike the boy in the bomber jacket, his grin reeks macabre with profound sadness behind watery eyes. "The gal I dug had hair just like yours," he whispers to Mallory. I feel nauseated.

"The married one was a true raven-haired beauty, and most guys respected her wedding band." But not Pops. "The single one," he squints at Mallory, "had a country girl freshness. Watching them tie it on together was like seeing a romance blossom."

I pillar the shortest stick on top and recount the hand-me-down Lincoln Logs, all dilapidated by the time they reached me. Elder brother also chewed pencils. I dust palms.

"It was as if they had barely known each other, then suddenly awoke." Dad lifts his brown bottle and I move to the rustic bar, splashing scotch and coke over ice. I hand a glass to Mallory.

"I rented an upstairs room," he continues, the rocker barely moving. "Once in bed, I virtually disappeared." Dad shows less ego than I ever thought possible. "The single one discovered her friend like Ponce de Leon entering the New World."

Although he never found that certain fountain. Mallory and I switch from sips to gulps. "I wrote to her afterwards," he says, wistfully. "Every month."

Never in my life had I seen my dad write, let alone mail, a letter. I wonder if my sister found replies. Again he rests his eyes on Mallory. "I wanted to marry her. She moved to Nob Hill and I returned to Bodega Bay."

The tragedy of loving someone with a different sexual orientation has bonded us at last. "Quite decent of you, considering mom was carrying Ellis."

"Shut up."

I take his plate and our glassware to the kitchen, ever stacked with food-caked dishes. Pitying the bi-weekly housekeeper, I fill the sink with hot water, squirting lotion until bubbles surpass plates by three inches.

I return to the hearth, avoiding Coop’s lingering gaze. "Certain priorities overtake us," my words hurl one shoulder, Mallory rising with my other arm. "Work tomorrow."

He nods, starting to stand. "Come again," he insists, then teeters back in the chair, another twenty logs willing to burn.